Hungary's right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the European Union yesterday, taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe's influx of refugees. An emergency effort led by Germany to force EU member states to accept mandatory quotas of refugees collapsed in discord.Berlin called for financial penalties against countries that refused to accommodate their share of migrants, drawing a furious response from central Europe.A Czech official accused Berlin of making empty threats, while Slovakia said such penalties would bring the "end of the EU".Under new rules, Hungary said anyone seeking asylum at its border with Serbia, the EU's external frontier, would automatically be turned back. Anyone trying to sneak through would face jail.In scenes echoing the Cold War, families with small children sat in fields beneath the country's new 3.5m-high razor wire-topped fence, which runs almost the length of the border.Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of the continent's loudest opponents of mass immigration, says he is acting to save Europe's "Christian values" by blocking the main route used by mainly Muslim refugees, who travel through the Balkans and cross his country to reach Germany or Sweden.Hundreds of thousands of people have been arriving at the EU's southern and eastern edges and making their way to the richer countries further north and west in the greatest migration to western Europe since World War 2.The influx has created an institutional crisis for the 28-member EU, with one of the bloc's signature achievements, its Schengen system of border-free travel across much of the continent, unravelling under the strain.Record arrivals forced Germany to reimpose emergency frontier controls this week, with several neighbours swiftly following suit.Germany and other relatively open countries say Europe has a moral obligation to accept refugees, and other EU states must be required to do their part.Eastern European countries argue that a more welcoming stance encourages risks attracting an uncontrolled influx that would overwhelm social welfare systems and dilute national cultures.Under its new rules, Hungary said it will now automatically turn back refugees who arrive by land over the main route from Serbia, a country it has declared "safe". Asylum claims would be processed within eight days and those at the Serbian border should be rejected within hours."If someone is a refugee, we will ask them whether they have submitted an asylum request in Serbia. If they had not done so, given that Serbia is a safe country, they will be rejected," Orban told TV2 on Monday."We will start a new era," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said shortly after midnight on the border. "We will stop the inflow of illegal migrants over our green borders."More than 100000 asylum seekers arrived in Germany last month, and nearly as many have already arrived by train in the first two weeks of this month.More than 460000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean this year, more than double the figure from last year...